Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  This, of course, is a mistake.

  Because I am about to learn a new word: portage.

  Portaging is part of canoeing, apparently. . . .

  But instead of the canoe carrying you, you carry it.

  “We’re heading to a nearby river system, and we have approximately one kilometer to cross,” Bonnie says, pointing to the map. “Each person carries his or her own pack and then you divide up the other items—food barrel, paddles, helmets, life jackets, canoe.”

  Some of the canoes have two people; some have three. I’m with Jin and Ally. Bonnie and Pat are together, Tavik is with Harvey, and the other three-person canoe is Melissa, Seth, and Henry. Since we have three, this means one person takes the barrel and life jackets, another takes the paddles and helmets, and a third person carries the canoe. That’s right—the third person carries the canoe. By themselves. Like this portaging thing doesn’t suck enough already.

  Jin, thank God, volunteers to be the first canoe carrier, and I end up with the paddles and helmets.

  The group sets off, a bumbling caravan, into the woods. The people with only two per canoe look horribly overburdened, and at first it seems like I got off easy. But the trail is treacherous—root-riddled, overgrown, and winding—and before long I realize it’s really awkward, carrying all this stuff. The paddles keep slipping out of my grip and falling, the helmets knock against one another and the trees, and the whole thing is totally out of balance.

  All up and down the trail, people are having problems, and we’re stopping constantly for someone to pick their stuff back up.

  There’s a lot of grunting, swearing, and sweating. Jin yelps and drops the canoe entirely in order to swat at a black fly that’s attached itself to the back of her neck. Twenty minutes in, we’re at a standstill, the trail littered with packs, barrels, paddles, and so on, all of us grumpy and frustrated.

  Me and my “loons and preppy sweaters” fantasy.

  I’m an idiot.

  “So,” Pat says, making his way to the middle of the line, “what have we learned?”

  “Portaging sucks ass,” Tavik says.

  “Food barrels are heavy,” Ally gasps.

  “This is impossible,” Henry concludes.

  “Nothing is impossible,” Pat says.

  I don’t even try to hide my eye-rolling.

  “Ingrid?” Pat says. “We can usually count on you for some astute observations. . . .”

  “Am I the only one experiencing déjà vu here?”

  “Say what you mean,” Pat says.

  “Oh, okay, how about this sucks?” I say.

  “And . . . ?”

  “And you set us up to fail again and I shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am?”

  Pat stands there, still waiting for a better answer.

  I look around, in spite of my irritation. What I see is a ton of impossible-to-carry crap.

  “It’s just too much stuff,” I say. “But we need all of it.”

  “And the solution is . . . ?” Pat says.

  I shrug.

  And then I see.

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” I say, barely repressing a groan. “We have to take more than one trip?”

  “Bingo!” Pat’s face splits into a huge smile. “Take what’s manageable, leave the rest, and things will go much faster. It might take two trips; it might take three.”

  “You could have just told us, and we would have believed it,” I say, throwing my hands up. “Instead you’ve just reinforced the fact that we can’t trust you.”

  Bonnie has the decency to look ashamed.

  Pat, though, just gives me his wiser-than-thou look, and says, “It’s yourself you have to learn to trust, Ingrid.”

  I might hate him.

  I would punch something if I had any arm strength to spare.

  Instead, I join the rest as we heave our packs off to the side of the path and get ready to move forward. Ally keeps the food barrel, now with the option of swinging it over her shoulder. The rule is still one person for the canoe, as carrying it is an essential camping skill, and I volunteer to take over because Jin’s fly bite is swollen and itchy.

  The canoe isn’t that heavy unless you get off-balance, but then it’s awful. It’s much harder than carrying gear, and harder than hiking, too, obviously. Well, it is hiking—hiking with a canoe. With all the ups and downs and turns and twists of the trail, I get thrown off-balance often. My shoulders and upper back start burning, and my arms start shaking. I hate this. I hate my life. I hate that I could have gone home three days ago and didn’t. Obviously I’m insane, not to mention ridiculously stubborn. And now there’s nothing to do but keep going.

  The only good news is that this task takes so much focus that I have no brain space left with which to dwell on my legion of other problems.

  It takes three trips before we’re at the river with all our gear.

  We’re all falling-down tired, but now we have to canoe for another three hours.

  Most of us can’t even lift a paddle right now.

  Tavik comes up to me during the short snack break before we get on the water, and says, “How about we try it interview-style?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your life story.”

  “Tavik, I can barely move, much less speak.”

  “You have a boyfriend?”

  “What? No.”

  “Someone trash your heart?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I never said it was. But that sounds like a yes. Wasn’t that easy? I ask, you answer. Nothing bad happened.”

  “Tavik . . .”

  “You know, you’re not going to get rid of me. I’m like an oncoming train.”

  “And I’m, what, tied to the tracks?”

  “Possibly. But you see? We have a deep conversation going now. With metaphors ’n’ shit.”

  I put my head in my hands and groan.

  “I think you need to talk. Who tied you to the track? Or did you do it to yourself? What does the track symbolize? What does it mean?”

  “Oh my God.”

  “And who was the boy?”

  “I think we’re about to go,” I say, pointing with relief to where Bonnie and Pat are edging their canoe toward the water.

  “You can tell me about him after dinner, if you want.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say, not meaning it, but too fried to argue.

  Dear Mom,

  Isn’t it hilarious that I chose to stay for the portaging and canoeing? Can you hear me laughing from where you are? No? Let me try a little louder.

  HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAA.

  Now, here’s a little life/nature lesson for you:

  If you ever have to schlepp a canoe through the forest, then paddle said canoe for a zillion hours, and then you find yourself, at dusk, with arms and shoulders like noodles on fire, and wishing only for a simple dinner of bugs and rice followed by passing out in your tent . . .

  And then you discover that your asshole trip leaders have taken the tents and given them to a giant Scotsman who has ferried them far beyond your reach, and that they expect you, instead, to build and sleep in your own lean-to . . .

  Yes, in a lean-to . . .

  for the rest of the bloody, rotten trip—that’s seven more nights, by the way—

  here’s what you do:

  That is, here’s what you figure out, and do with the help of your fellow campers, because the lousy, manipulative leaders refuse to give any instruction, and don’t even demonstrate, because guess what. They get to keep their tent. . . .

  Find two trees, not too far apart, that are on high ground and just the right distance from each other.

  Collect many long narrow straight sticks, plus three larger branches.

  Make the three larg
e branches into a frame to lean against the two trees. Hopefully you will have rope for this. If you’re lucky. (Note: if you’re in this situation in the first place, you’re probably not lucky.)

  Lay the long narrow sticks against the frame (lean them, actually—get it?).

  Set/weave evergreen branches on top of the narrow sticks, trying not to knock the whole thing over in the process. Then finish with a layer of large-ish leaves facing out and flat so they will funnel the rain, if it rains, down to the ground, instead of into the lean-to.

  Place your sleeping bag inside the lean-to.

  Cry a few hot, silent, and totally pointless tears while you ponder the lengths you would go to, what you would give, or give up, just to get your stinky tent back . . . .

  Hate everything.

  Your wretched daughter who still loves you,

  Ingrid

  Harvey, Jin, and Seth all build solid-looking lean-tos.

  Henry will only be able to crawl into his, because he’s made it on top of a hollow. Ally’s is dodgy, Melissa’s looks like a beaver dam, mine is a deathtrap.

  And Tavik—the person who generously helped us all figure out what to do—has a masterpiece. The branches are tight and even, it’s almost tall enough to stand in, and he made it next to a large boulder, so one side of it has an actual wall.

  “Unlike me, I’d say you have an excellent chance of surviving the apocalypse,” I say to him, beyond caring if people notice the tear streaks on my face.

  “When I was a kid, there was a forest—well, some woods, I guess. Me and my brother, when my dad was on a bender, we’d go build one of these in the woods, hide out for the day, or even overnight. We built one really good one that stayed up for years.”

  “Wow.” Every time I get to feeling sorry for myself on this trip, I hear one of these stories so matter-of-fact in its terribleness that it makes me feel thoroughly unworthy of my own unhappiness. “Sounds rough.”

  But Tavik grins. “It was okay. We were safer that way, and we kinda had fun. Glad you like it. Yours is . . .” He surveys mine, a funny expression on his face.

  “Look, I really can’t even lift my arms after today, so it’s a miracle I built one at all.”

  I am not keen on sleeping out in the open, so I actually worked hard trying to make the roof area dense, in case it rains. So the top is heavy and furry, but the whole thing sways slightly in the wind.

  “It looks very . . . uh, artistic.” He’s trying not to laugh.

  “Let’s be honest; I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t collapse on me. And then, tomorrow, after it has and I have a concussion? That’s when Pat will tell me what I did wrong.”

  “I’m just across the way if you need to take refuge.”

  “Oh, so you can fire questions at me about my nonexistent love life?”

  “What happened?” he says. “Since you brought it up.”

  “There was a boy,” I say. I don’t know why the hell I’m saying it, but I am. “His name was Isaac.” And then, standing there in front of our lean-tos, I start to tell Tavik about Oz—the Isaac part, not the Mom part.

  It comes out calm and factual, and he just listens until we’re called to eat.

  Dinner is a quiet affair. Everyone except Harvey and Tavik is pissed about losing the tents, but no one is tired enough to argue, and anyway, what’s the point?

  Bonnie excuses us from circle, a reprieve that is met with a muted cheer.

  The downside is bedtime comes much faster.

  I had not realized how much the tent protected us not only from mosquitoes but also from the sound of them. And there are bats. We can hear them and sometimes see them in the moonlight, or firelight, swooping low across the sky. They must have been around the entire time, but of course tonight is when I notice them.

  I wear the netted hat to bed. I tie it up at its base, around my neck, then climb into my sleeping bag, and pull it up over my net-covered head, so there is absolutely no skin exposed, and really just enough net exposed for me to breathe.

  The temperature keeps dropping, and I start to shiver.

  Every forest sound becomes, in my mind, a bat swooping down to bury itself in my sleeping bag, or a venomous snake slithering in beside me, or a rampaging bear coming to eat me one limb at a time. . . .

  I see Tavik’s reading light click on, and moments later I’m at the side of his lean-to, sleeping bag in hand, mosquito hat still on.

  “Knock, knock,” I whisper.

  With amazement, I realize he has some netting hung over the open side of his structure.

  “I heard you coming,” he says, pulling the fabric aside and poking his head out. “You’d be a terrible tracker. Your lean-to fall apart?”

  “Not yet. But . . . I’m cold and s-scared.”

  “Come in.” He moves to make room for me.

  I crawl in and scoot over to one side.

  “Where did you get this?” I point to the fabric.

  “Something I brought, just in case. Crunches up small. You okay?”

  “No.” I wriggle into my sleeping bag, pull it back up to my neck—even this little movement kills my canoeing-sore arms—and sit facing him.

  “You’re a freak in that, you know,” he says, reaching out and touching the hat brim.

  “Add that to the long list of things I no longer give a shit about,” I say.

  “Fair enough,” he says with a grin. “You can probably do without it in here, though. I killed any mosquitoes that got in.”

  “Okay . . .” I pull the hat off and take a shaky breath. It’s good to be in a superior shelter, and not alone. “I miss the tent.”

  “I know,” he says, eyes on mine in the dim light. “The night sounds seem a lot louder, and I guess we were keeping each other warm. All of us, I mean.”

  “Uh-huh.” I’m still shivering, and trying unsuccessfully to hide it. By morning I am going to be a frozen ball of lactic acid.

  “Listen, you could . . .” He holds his arms out. “Turn around, and you can lean back against me. It’ll help you warm up. I’ll just lean against the rock.”

  “Well . . .” I hesitate. The idea of having a warm body to press against is powerfully tempting. In fact I am almost desperate for it all of a sudden. For the warmth, and maybe even for the contact. But Tavik is . . .

  “Come on, I’m harmless,” he says, like he’s reading my thoughts.

  “I call bullshit on that.”

  “What, because I’m a convicted felon?”

  “Yes. And.”

  “And? What ‘and’?”

  “And . . .” I put my arm out in an all-encompassing gesture. “Oncoming train, and. Tough guy, and. Lots of and.”

  “Really.” His eyes seem to go liquid, and darker, and they pull at me.

  “See?” I say, and swallow. “Put that away.”

  “What?”

  “That non-harmless look.” I’m telling him to stop looking at me like that, but . . . I don’t hate the feeling it gives me. It’s better than most of the other feelings I’ve been experiencing lately. I could fall into this feeling and stay there for quite some time, and it would be . . . distracting, at least.

  “This is just the look of me appreciating how your mind works,” he says, not stopping.

  There’s a long, fraught pause where we are totally still, until finally I look away, breaking the connection.

  “So . . .” Tavik says, then swallows. “What ever happened to poor Isaac?”

  “Oh. Well . . .” I don’t want to talk about it, really, but my mind is racing with thoughts along the lines of What the hell did I just almost do . . . ? and this is therefore a welcome change of subject. “After the play, Isaac tried for the rest of the school year to make up with me, but I was too upset. Then last summer I realized maybe I should give him a chance. But when school st
arted, he was with Autumn again, which sort of . . . crushed me . . . even though it was my own fault. It made me insane, having to see them together at school. Then . . . he broke up with her during the December break and sent me this long e-mail saying he was still thinking about me, and he knew his thing with her was a mistake. . . . But it was too late because I wasn’t . . . in the right headspace. That’s about it.”

  “Sad story,” Tavik says.

  “I guess. Yeah.”

  “You’re still shivering. Come here.”

  “But . . .”

  “Let’s not be dumb. You’re freezing. We’ve slept in the same tent all this time, and I can help you warm up. I am harmless, as in, I mean you no harm. Not even the fun kind.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good. Come.” I turn and let him pull me back between his legs, my back against his chest. Then he wraps his arms around me, and I drop my head back against his shoulder because he is so amazingly warm, and the closeness of him is confusing enough to scramble my misery.

  “See?” he says. “Helpful, and mostly harmless.”

  “Okay, sure,” I say, pressing myself even closer.

  “I’m too tired to cause any trouble tonight, anyway,” he says, and yawns.

  And then I yawn. A bone-deep warmth is kicking in, giving me a sleepy, stoner sensation.

  “I should go,” I whisper blearily, a few minutes later.

  In answer, he tightens his arms around me, and says, “Shh. You’re going to sleep with me.”

  That gives me a jolt, and I start to pull away.

  “Sleep,” he says. “If I meant something else, I’d say so. Haven’t we covered this?”

  “Is that what we were covering?”

  “You’re driving me nuts. Let’s go to sleep.”

  “Won’t we get in trouble?”

  “What are they going to do? Anyway, I wake up early. We can sneak you back then. Come here . . .”

  He pulls me close again, and then drags over the pile of stuff he uses for a pillow, clicks off the reading light, and eases us both down onto the ground, wrapping himself around me in spoon position.

  I am so toasty, so weary, and so sore, I can’t imagine leaving.

  “Okay,” I say.